BHOPAL: The former Uttar Pradesh Governor and veteran Congress leader Aziz Qureshi lost his temper and vented his anguish against the party for being homely with saffron politics.
Hitting out at his party, Qureshi said “Congress leaders are chanting Jai Ganga Maiya, Jai Narmada Maiya, Garva se kaho Hindu hain, besides taking out religious yatras and installing idols at the party headquarters in Madhya Pradesh. This is shameful," he said, adding that he is not scared of being kicked out of the party.
“All political parties including the Congress should realize that Muslims are not their slaves," he said and added, "There's a limit to the tolerance level of the Muslims. They are not cowards."
MP BJP spokesperson Pankaj Chaturvedi took to platform X to slam the Congress party for Quereshi's provocative remarks.
“What the veteran Congress leader and ex-governor spoke on Sunday, exposes the real face of the Congress. It shows that the Congress party believes in the politics of minority appeasement and its leaders, including Rahul Gandhi and Kamal Nath, turn towards the Hindus only during the poll season. Both, Rahul Gandhi and Kamal Nath should come clear on Qureshi’s provocative statements. If the two leaders remain silent on it, it will mean their tacit approval of the veteran’s statements,” he said.
The state unit of the Congress however distanced itself from Qureshi’s remarks by stating that it was the veteran leader's personal opinion.
“It’s his personal opinion. The Congress believes in secularism and cannot subscribe to what has been reportedly said by him (Qureshi),” state Congress’s media department head KK Mishra said on Tuesday.
The 82-year-old Qureshi has back once a minister in the Congress government in MP. He has also served in gubernatorial positions in UP, Uttarakhand, and Mizoram in the past. In 1972, he won on a Congress ticket from the Sehore assembly seat. He was elected to the Lok Sabha as a Congress candidate from the Satna seat of the Vindhya region in 1984.
Just a few weeks back, two prominent politicians, including Congress leader and spiritual guru Acharya Pramod Krishnam and ex-RJD MP Shivanand Tiwari had slammed MP Congress chief and state’s former CM Kamal Nath and his first-time MP son Nakul Nath for reportedly hosting the Ram and Hanuman Katha of Hindu Rashtra supporter self-styled godman Dhirendra Shastri in Chhindwara district. The two leaders from UP and Bihar respectively, had particularly opposed the welcome of Shastri by the father-son politician duo, who had performed arti and put tilak on the godman’s forehead.
